How to stay healthy when you’re the busiest person in the world
Staying healthy is hard, but it can be done — no matter how busy your schedule is.
by: E.B. Johnson
I’m a business owner as well as a full-time freelancer and I understand the value of every single minute of my day. Busy professionals move a million-miles-a-minute and they know they can’t afford to waste a second. People like us regularly go for hours without a break, and work through lunch, weekends and even holidays to make sure nothing is slipping through the cracks.
The problem with this busier-than-busy lifestyle, though, is that it often causes us to lose touch with our wellbeing. Skipping breakfast and working through the night deteriorates our health and leads to trouble concentrating on getting the results you need. While we might think our busyness is helping transform our lives for the better, chances are it’s coming at the cost of your health.
You can be busy and healthy. It just takes a little know how. By focusing on they key areas of nutrition, wellness and fitness (while making a few simple tweaks) you can give your body the energy and power it needs to succeed — no matter how chaotic your life might be.
Nutrition
The key when it comes to bettering our health is starting small. Nutrition is one of the quickest and easiest ways to jam-pack some major transformation into our busy schedules, but it’s often the first thing we toss when things get a little frantic. It might be easier said than done, but nutrition is a great place to start if you’re looking to get healthier on the go.
1. Focus on 3-ingredient meals.
There are a world of easy and delicious meals out there and they stretch far beyond the realms of peanut butter and jelly. Focusing on “3-ingredient meals” allows you to minimize your shopping lists and keep things quick and functional. These meals can be super healthy (and packed full of flavor) but they can also be incredibly healthy too.
2. Outsmart the menu.
Being busy means eating out, but there are some tricks to mastering the menu when it comes to being healthy and easting on-the-go.
We like to opt for the yummiest or most familiar thing on the menu when we eat out or order in. While it’s nice to treat yourself from time to time, get the most out of that menu by going for the best options instead.
Choose at least one item that’s entirely veggie based and make sure you focus on lean proteins when it comes to the main course of your meal. Drop the fried chicken and keep your health and fitness goals on track by ordering wisely, rather than comfortably.
3. Iron up.
One of the most common causes of fatigue and depression is iron deficiency. When our iron dips too low, our red blood cells dip low, moving less oxygen through our bodies. It’s estimated that nearly 20% of women live with some type of iron deficiency, while 3% of men also live daily with this condition (more commonly known as anaemia).
You can avoid this pitfall and keep your energy levels high by chowing down on lean meats, lentils and oatmeal, which will help you boost your muscle strength and make it easier to get through the workday.
4. Practice mindful eating.
Everyone knows the feeling of that last-minute deadline push. We start scarfing down meals behind our computers and forget to breathe, let alone think about what our bodies need in that moment.
Stress — especially the stress of work — can cause us to gorge and overeat. To avoid the many problems this can cause, it’s important to eat mindfully when things are tough.
Slow down and take a few deep breaths between your bites. Be aware of how your body feels and take note when you’re actually full. When you’re mindful of how and why you’re eating, you’ll end up eating much less and feeling better for it.
5. Learn to love the microwave.
Microwave food often gets a bad rap and forces us to think of frozen TV dinners and scary-looking grey meat. Our microwaves can do much more for us than heat up sub-par fast food, though. These days, there’s all kind of healthy options available in a fast and easy microwavable meals.
You can make one-minute quiche in a mug or even some tasty breakfast quinoa. Complicated and time-consuming meals are a thing of the past with yummy dishes like flaky salmon now available with the push of a button and spin of a knob. Learn to love your microwave again and get reacquainted with a hot meal. All with little to no prep work necessary!
6. Weekend prep.
Salads are a quick and easy meal that you can prepare ahead of time, but they can be time consuming to put together.
You can lessen this time by spending your weekend prepping all the things you’ll need and putting them together in a way that works for your grab-and-go lifestyle.
Chop up all your veggies while you’ve got a spare moment on the weekend. Store them in the fridge and then pre-cook whatever protein you plan on adding. When you spend the time prepping first, you can cut your assembly time down to five minutes or less during the week when things are frantic.
7. Focus on meals rather than snacks.
Getting caught up in the kids’ schedules or your work can lead to a bad snacking habit that destroys our general health and feeling of wellbeing. It can feel like there’s no time in a day and, when that happens, we grab the easiest thing to eat — rather than what we actually need.
Rather than grabbing a handful of trail mix here and there or another bag of Doritos there, maximize your nutrition by focusing on well-balanced meals instead of snacks.
Snacking can make us feel like we aren’t eating as much, but in reality we wind up eating more. All those little calories add up to big surpluses, and that can lead to weight issues and other health complications. Rather than reaching for the chips, reach for some rich peanut butter and banana toast instead; or an overnight crock-pot egg casserole.
8. Add veggies to anything and everything.
You can add vegetables to things you possibly never imagined. Spinach is a great power-packer to add to smoothies and sweet potatoes make a scrumptious surprise to that old brownie recipe. Whether you’re having dessert or a morning breakfast muffin, consider giving it a healthy upgrade by adding a veggie to the party.
9. Reject the bar bites.
A lot of us unwind by hitting the local bar and having a drink or two to relax after a long day. We load up on beverages and a host of tasty snacks, but this too is a bad habit that can lead to some aggravating repercussions.
Rather than loading up on booze and snacks, though, we can make the pastime a healthier one by choosing one or the other.
When heading out for a night of drinking, eat a small (and healthy) meal first and it will make that bar nosh less tempting.
If you just can’t resist, try to stick to soups or salads and reject those salty fries and greasy burgers and pizza. Pick one item to splurge on and avoid the rest. After all, it’s the drinks that are the star of the show on a night out anyway.
10. Boost your protein.
Decadent snacks like potato chips and cookies seem like a good choice when we’re busy, but they don’t actually keep us full for long even though they’re full of calories. We can avoid those snacking urges and keep ourselves on the straight and narrow by focusing on high-protein meals that fill us up and keep us feeling more satisfied for hours.
11. Get spicy.
Spicy food can actually do a lot to help boost your metabolism. Take for instance the ever-popular sriracha sauce, which has been shown to help speed up the body’s metabolism.
Rather than reaching for that mayonnaise, opt for some spicy flavor instead and you can really do yourself some favors in the health department. Mustard, too, is another great, low-calorie condiment that can spice things up and add some flavor when ingredients are falling flat.
12. Soups and stews.
We traditionally think of soup and stew as a comfort food, but it’s also a meal that can help us save time and money.
Soups are a relatively healthy meal that we can make in large batches at the beginning of the week. These batches can be frozen and stored for use days and months down the line, allowing you to remove and thaw as needed.
13. Careful caffeination.
There’s a bit of conflicting data out there on coffee and whether or not it’s good for us, but here are some facts that still stick true: coffee helps to ramp up our metabolism and gives us the energy we need to succeed when we’re in a slump.
Coffee joints can be expensive, but you don’t have to break the bank to get it. Grinding our own coffee beans and keeping a French press in our office or at your desk is a great way to get the caffeine boost you need when you need it — on the cheap.
14. Crock-Pot life.
Slow cookers are great, and now that we live in the digital age, we can even control them with our smartphones. They are truly the multitasking heroes of our kitchens, cooking anything and everything from soups, to meats, to oatmeal and literally everything else in-between.
All you have to do to put together a slow cooker masterpiece is add the ingredients and turn it on. From there on out it does the rest of the work for you.
If you’re someone who is truly busy, then now is the time to invest in the Crock-Pot of your dreams. Forget traditional cooking and let your slow cooker do the work for you so you can go back to getting things done.
15. Stash the snacks.
While snacking isn’t the ideal way to go about getting your nutrition, schedule changes and delays are inevitable.
When things go unexpectedly, it’s wise to have a back-up on hand so you can keep your energy levels soaring and your attention focused.
Having an emergency snack supply will help ensure that you always have something healthy to eat on hand, avoiding the slip into that world of greasy pizzas and burgers. Trail mix, unsweetened dried fruit and granola bars are a great way to keep full in the chaos.
16. Go for the real deal.
Store-bought varieties of things like juice and cereals can often be packed full of sugar and fillers, despite what we may believe. Rather than going for the empty calories, opt for the real thing instead and reach for a real apple instead of that sugary apple juice.
17. Make someone else do the work.
One of the biggest things that prevents me from eating healthy in the chaos of my busy life is the actual act of grocery shopping. I hate going out and fighting the crowds while I look for the things I need to feed myself for the week.
That’s where grocery delivery comes in. While you still have to put the time in when it comes to the cooking, companies now offer grocery delivery that completely eliminates the whole unpleasant shopping experience.
18. Bring your own lunch.
It might seem time-intensive to pack and bring your lunch to work, but it can actually save you money, time and effort in the long run.
Skipping out on bringing our own food to work leaves us in the lurch, and often leads to fast-food binges that only bring us down and leave us feeling worse.
By sticking to simple creations like veggie wraps, hearty soups and quinoa salads, we can create easy and healthy lunch options that leave us feeling full and able to get back to the work we need to live.
19. Smoothie prep.
Smoothies are one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to stay healthy on the go. Containing fruits, vegetables and even protein powders, all you have to do is dump the non-liquid ingredients into a Ziploc storage bags until you’re ready to dump them into the blender.
Fitness
Our physical fitness can be the hardest mountain to tackle when it comes to our busy schedules. It seems impossible to find the time to run or workout when you have all the pressures of friends, family and work bearing down on you. There is a way to get fit when you’re busy, though. It just takes a little creativity and determination to get there.
1. Focus on variety.
It’s not a secret that working out gets boring, no matter how frequently you do it. Getting bored with our workouts is one of the biggest reasons we stop going to the gym, but we can prevent this by focusing on variety in the way we workout in general.
If you’re a runner, try going to a spin class instead. If you’re a weight lifter, try challenging yourself with yoga or pilates. Keeping things interesting will help keep us on track and keep us motivated to achieve our fitness goals no matter how busy we may be.
2. Interval training.
Working out gets left to the wayside when our lives get frantic, but we really don’t need more than 20 minutes of focused activity to reach our fitness goals.
Instead of hitting the gym all week long, mix in a quick series of sprints on the treadmill.
Short bursts of high intensity exercise is actually more effective for our bodies than long and laborious workout routines.
Regular exercise is good for not only our bodies, but our hearts and minds as well. It can even help you sleep better, but you have to put in the time and squeeze it in whenever possible.
3. Walking it out.
Most people spend the majority of their working day sitting in front of a computer screen. Then, they drive home (sitting down) and then spend the night sitting in front of a TV screen. On average, we spend 70% of our day just sitting down, and that’s taking a serious toll on our mental and physical wellbeing.
You can sneak some exercise into your day by just getting up to walk whenever possible. Run errands on foot, take the stairs or even park further away from the office than you normally do. Walking is a great way to exercise and one of the easiest routines to incorporate into our lifestyles.
4. Practice full-body moves.
If you’re someone like me who literally has almost no time to work out, use the time you do have to engage your entire body.
Use kettlebells or experiment with different variations of push ups to get all the muscles in your body working and that heart racing. Burpees, jump rope and swimming are also great ways to engage your whole body in a narrow window of time.
5. Short strength workouts.
While I’m sure we would all love carve out 45 minutes for a workout each day, that isn’t always possible. If a morning workout or big gym sesh isn’t feasible for you, focus instead on a quick yoga session or bodyweight workout that focuses on building strength over short bursts.
6. Transform TV time into workout time.
We all want to binge that next episode of Orange is the New Black, but those binges can add up — especially when we’re already busy.
You can transform that rare television time into workout time by turning that Netflix binge into a 15 or 20 minute stretch or bodyweight workout. Watching television or music videos can be a great way to space out and detach from our workout, making it easier to accomplish and maintain.
7. Gym lockers.
If you are someone that manages to find the time to occasionally squeeze in a proper gym workout, consider renting a locker at your gym to minimize the time you have to spend preparing for the workout in-between work and your busy personal schedule.
Renting a gym locker can be a smart move if you’re someone who wastes a lot of time packing a gym bag or moving things in-between your work space and your gym space.
Rather than running behind when you forget those sneakers or a clean towel, make sure you’re always ready for training by leaving them behind in a gym locker than you can call on anytime. While it might be a little more expensive for you, it will eliminate excuses and also help you eliminate back and shoulder problems from lugging around that heavy gym bag.
8. Exercise at your desk.
Let’s face it — there just isn’t time to work out some days. On those days, the smartest thing you can do is engage in some deskercise. Though it might feel funny at first, desk exercises can be a great way to get that extra kick you need to keep your performance levels high.
Try stapler curls and shoulder shrugs to loosen things up above the waist. If you’re looking to get the most out of your midsection, then crunch time crunches are just the thing you need to “tighten up”.
Mental wellbeing
Too often, when we read these “get healthy even if you’re busy” articles, they lose sight of the most important aspect of our overall health: our mental wellbeing.
Our mental wellbeing determines everything from our beliefs to our behaviors. When our mental fortifications are strong, we have resilience to the stressors or life, but when it’s lacking we can find ourselves emotionally overwhelmed. At our busiest, we often lose touch with our inner peace and our mental health suffers.
If we want to succeed, if we want to have the energy and health to keep going, we have to learn to take care of the inside as well as the outside.
1. Reduce your stress.
Stress not only eats away at our mental health, it destroys our physical health as well. When we fail to address stress, it manifests in negative ways and makes it harder to accomplish the tasks that are critical to our day.
Reducing stress can be as easy as reading a good book or drinking a good cup of tea. You can also reduce stress by exercising, meditating and focusing your energy into healthy outlets that make you feel fulfilled and in control of your destiny.
2. Learn how to set goals.
Our personal and professional lives are full of goals, but those can feel more like setbacks when we don’t set smart goals or don’t know how to achieve the goals we already have.
Setting goals is a great way to grow, but you have to be smart about how you view them and achieve them. It’s all about starting small when it comes to goals, and taking on one project at a time instead of all of them.
3. Take a holiday.
Though we may not want to hear it, sometimes we have to stop working in order to produce better work.
If you’re anything like me, you probably think that you don’t have the time to take a vacation. While that might feel true, taking off deserved time off allows us to be happier, healthier and more productive in the long run.
Booking downtime can be as simple as a long-weekend staycation, but it’s key to our mental health. We have to unplug from life sometimes to refocus our energies and allow our soul batteries to recharge. Taking a break isn’t being lazy; it’s looking after yourself when no one else will.
4. Meditate.
When we’re busy we get stressed and that can lead to problems like insomnia and cognitive issues.
Work on mellowing out at the end of a long day by developing a meditation practice that allows you to steady your mind. Before turning out the lights, dedicate 5–10 minutes of quiet breathing — which will not only help you sleep better, but also help you reflect over the positive and negatives of your day.
5. Unplug from tech (just a little).
Our phones and our tablets and our laptops seem to constantly be buzzing. From emails to text messages to notifications — it seems like there’s always something to do; always someone to get back to.
This constant need to be plugged in can erode our mental wellbeing and leave us feeling stressed and frazzled. Constant notifications from Facebook, Instagram and Reddit cause us to lose focus on the things that matter, and can leave us feeling negative and in a funk.
It can be hard to unplug, but it’s critically important for maintaining our inner zen. When you’re at work, keep your phone off and out of sight and turn off the notifications that cause you to break focus. At home, trying unplugging from tech entirely, even if it’s just for a few minutes each night.
6. Maximize your productivity.
Take the time to get familiar with the things that sidetrack you. When you can identify these problem areas, you can edge them before they throw you off course. This backdoor productivity hack will boost your confidence and your drive. It takes a little digging, though, and it takes a little uncomfortable commitment.
If social media is the major time suck in your life, cut the cord by setting yourself time limits each time you use Facebook or Twitter. If you’re someone who gets sucked into socializing too easily, try meeting in a conference room or some other neutral or public place that allows you to get into the zone and focus.
Ask for help when you need and learn to know how to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing your tools lets you define the work you do and how well you do it.
7. Master to-do lists.
All the little things we have to do in a day — pay bills, pick up laundry, clean the kitchen — really add up. Whether we accomplish these things or don’t, they weigh heavily on our peace of mind and can impact the way we feel and operate.
Writing down the things we need to do makes it easier to accomplish them.
When you lead a busy life, things can get lost in the shuffle. Stay on top of where you’re at and where we need to go by mastering the to-do list.
Prioritize the things you need to tackle and break them down in to more manageable, bite-sized tasks. Work from the hardest task to the easiest and try to schedule your most involved tasks for first thing in the morning, when your energy and willpower are at their highest.
8. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.
Drinking more water isn’t just good for our skin. It’s good for our minds too.
Brain cells require water to operate at their maximum efficiency. Without enough water, they can’t carry out the tasks that we rely from everything to breathing to feeling happy. When we’re thirsty, we actually lose our ability to perform mental tasks, so it’s imperative to get enough water in order to make sure you have the mental fortitude to tackle the day.
Drinking water as soon as you wake up can help improve memory and cognitive function, as well as give you the energy boost you need to get up and get ready. It can also help relieve headaches, and help ramp up our metabolism and reach our weight loss goals.
There’s a lot of “feeling good” that can be achieved by simply making sure you get enough water in a day. Give your body (and your mind) the fuel and hydration it needs to perform and it will — more often than not — pay you back in riches.
Putting it all together…
It’s possible to be busy and the best version of yourself. Getting healthy on busy schedule just requires a little focus on nutrition, fitness and mental health, as well as a little creativity and commitment.
By focusing on the food that fuels you, the fitness that fits into your busy and the factors that feed your mental state, you can transform your life (and your body) in as little as 30 days.
Give your body the nourishment it deserves. If you take care of your mind and your body, you’ll find yourself being more productive and successful in life. With a little bit of planning and a touch of preparation, anything is possible.
